Eight young people sit in a crowded outdoor courtyard, wearing bright, colorful and scanty clothing. They have muscles, curves and even, glowing, dark brown skin. They could be cousins to fashion runway models like Alek Wek or Tyson Beckford or any one of this month's more handsome, charismatic chart-topping hip-hoppers. Most are smiling or laughing; one man clutches a champagne bottle.

No one I know dresses or acts like this in real life. I never get invited to parties like these, where the clothes look like a dashed-off take on what some corporate designer thought the hip urban youth of today should be wearing this summer. The look that these Beautiful People are fronting isn't hip-hop swagger, retro appropriation or athletic/surf, but it somehow manages to borrow elements from all three styles without getting caught stealing outright.

The most prominent must-have in the line is "snow bleach" jeans (if one can't wait until after Memorial Day to begin wearing white in public). The Diesel "fashion expert" tells us that denim is the new black, a statement packed with off-color irony when you consider that the pants are white, the models are brown and the conceit of the whole marketing campaign takes surreal and heretical liberties with all things black.

Over the ad (well out of the way of the models but definitely in your face) floats a newspaper called the Daily African, described on its front page as "Africa's biggest-selling quality daily." Its headlines blare startling news: "Birthrate booms in Italy and Spain. Europe set back even further." The lead story's sub-headline continues: "With an average of 8.7 children born to every Italian woman and an annual GNP per capita below AFRO 45, there is a high risk of looming tragedy in southern Europe." The highlighted quote: "The local liquid drug Grappa may be blamed for high sexual activity."

It's a triumphant escapist fantasia. Or maybe it's a symbol-savvy script-flipping of Africa's image as an unstable, HIV-stricken, famine-ridden post-colonial locus where things fall (ahem) apart. Or is it ad copy for the African Union, the continent-spanning organization that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, with visions of rivaling the European Union in influence and respect from the West, is trying to foster with gestures of goodwill and oil money? Maybe it's a take on two trends: the awareness of African diasporic youth as fashion and music trendsetters; and the new economy's speedy upward trajectory and subsequent bumpy descent.

At the paper's Web site, the top story describes an African telecom CEO's upscale celebration after her deals to offer cellphones in Germany and England sparked a record rise in the stock market.

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